


Twelve Out of Ten

by ownedbyacat



Series: Sane, Safe, Alive [7]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-01
Updated: 2013-12-01
Packaged: 2018-01-03 05:20:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1066235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ownedbyacat/pseuds/ownedbyacat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This... was bad. Very bad. On a scale of one to ten, Clint’s situation scored twelve. Which meant his chances of freeing himself were minuscule.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twelve Out of Ten

Natasha was the first to hear the news. She didn’t panic. Natasha never panicked. Her spine just snapped a little straighter and her lips pressed a little tighter together. She left the control room, collected her gear and made her way to Coulson’s office and if agents, junior and senior both, stepped hurriedly out of her way as she moved through SHIELD’s hallways, she’d long ceased to notice.

“Barton’s MIA,” she said without preamble when Coulson looked up from his screen.

“I know.” Coulson’s voice was steady and as Natasha stepped closer she saw that he was monitoring mission comms. “Team got separated on the way back. Barton was covering the retreat. He didn’t rendezvous with them at the safe house, but there’s been a lot of activity in the area. And lots of chatter.”

“He’s been taken.”

“That accounts best for all the activity.”

“We are going in?” It wasn’t a question and Coulson didn’t treat it as such.

“They’re prepping the jet. Wheels up in twenty,” he said.

Natasha turned and left without another word. If Clint was being held captive, she had preparations to make.

ooO xXx Ooo

This... was bad. Very bad. On a scale of one to ten, his situation scored twelve. Which meant his chances of freeing himself were minuscule. Clint remembered little beyond covering the team’s retreat, running out of arrows and bullets while attempting to get through a small army of guards that had suddenly materialised from nowhere. The fighting had been fierce and dirty until... well, judging by his present condition, someone had managed to knock him out.

Hilarity bubbled up his throat and broke forth in a husky chuckle. He had a vision of himself, black tac suit, boots and empty quiver, buried under an avalanche of bulky muscle, swamping him the only way to subdue him. He had no idea if this was how it had gone, but it made an entertaining image. And a good story told over a beer.

His lack of actual memory bothered him. However much he tried to recall the events leading up to ... this, only a few small shards of memory linked his past to his present.

The light had been too bright when he woke the first time and he’d been strapped to a surface that was cold and hard and smooth. Not a gurney. More like an operating table. Polished metal with grooves cut along the edge, and cuffs that held his wrists and ankles like a vice.

There had been pain. Not the sharp, trailing pain of being cut, nor the aching bloom of punches. This pain had been searing, burning, spreading like liquid fire through his veins leaving screaming nerve endings and skin so tight it felt as if it would split at the lightest touch. 

Along with the pain he remembered a laugh. A high-pitched chuckle that grated, glee so painful it was a torture all by itself. There had been words, too, words he couldn’t focus on through the burning, words that had venom at their core. They poured over him like acid from a drum, adding to the torture until the waves of pain had risen too high and Clint had been lost beneath them.

The second time he woke to darkness and silence, to a pounding headache and the taste of blood on his lips, to hands and feet so tightly cuffed that it took him a while to realise his real predicament.

He wasn’t being held in a cell. 

ooO xXx Ooo

Phil Coulson and Natasha Romanoff stepped from the Quinjet side by side, shoulders touching. Natasha, in a black tac suit that clung like a second skin, bristled with visible weaponry and each step she took down the ramp hinted at other, hidden, terrors she was prepared to unleash. Coulson was immaculate in a charcoal Dolce suit, silver tie precisely knotted and shoes sporting a mirror shine. He had his phone to his ear and Director Fury on the other end and to anyone watching, the two agents were a terrifying sight. The babble of voices in the hangar stopped abruptly. An empty space formed at the end of the ramp, as if people feared to breathe the same air.

“Is the car ready?” Coulson asked briskly, phone still to his ear. “Who is monitoring the site?”

“Agents Walsh and Avent are back at the lab.”

“You left the _kids_ to watch over Barton?” Coulson didn’t sound incredulous as much as _I’m so gonna kick your ass_ , but Natasha stopped him with a look.

“They know who they’re looking out for,” she said softly and Coulson took a deep breath and nodded. The two young agents owed Clint their lives. They wouldn’t let him die.

“Let’s move out,” he said crisply and, “Thank you, sir,” not feeling in the least embarrassed that it had taken the combined efforts of Natasha _and_ Nick Fury to keep him from imploding on the long flight to Clint Barton’s last known location. If anyone did, Nick and Natasha understood the value of friendship. And if either suspected that Phil Coulson’s near meltdown had an additional cause, they didn’t bother to mention it.

ooO xXx Ooo

Clint Barton wasn’t claustrophobic. If he was he’d never have made SHIELD’s ventilation system his favourite place to hang out. Ok, it came with the additional benefit of being able to scare the crap out of Ivy League graduates that fancied themselves SHIELD agents, but he still couldn’t have tolerated the narrow spaces and tight bends had claustrophobia been an issue.

Clint Barton wasn’t claustrophobic, but when he realised that he wasn’t just tightly cuffed but shut into a box he came as close to panic as he ever had in his life. His breathing sped, his heart raced and he struggled against his bonds with all the strength he had for endless minutes.

It was the lack of air that finally halted the heedless struggle, the gasping breaths that didn’t seem to satisfy his straining lungs. He stilled, only now noticing the burn in his bound wrists, the ache in his tethered ankles. There would be bruises, if he was lucky. Skin rubbed raw and torn if he wasn’t.

With a deep breath Clint swallowed the nausea, the panic and the fear. _Think_ , he admonished himself. _Just think. Assess the situation. Establish a linear plan._ He relaxed his muscles as much as he was able, kept his breathing shallow and took stock:

He was in the dark.

He was bound hand and foot, too closely to free himself, to reach the file sown into his tac suit or any of his other hidden weapons.

He was enclosed in a box. (Clint absolutely refused to call it a coffin.)

Struggling led to him gasping from lack of air, though the faint hint of fresh air now and then suggested that he hadn’t been entombed to die.

His noisy struggle had elicited no reaction of any kind.

He was struggling to breathe any time he grew agitated.

All things considered, this was bad. He couldn’t get loose. He couldn’t get out. And if he tried anything he couldn’t breathe. On his scale of one to ten, this situation definitely scored twelve. His thoughts blurred, idea merging into idea without giving him the chance to evaluate one or the other... and Clint realised that his captors had left him just enough oxygen to survive and not enough to make any attempt to help himself. 

That realisation made his choice for him. Clint knew that Coulson and Natasha would come for him. All he had to do was survive until they arrived. He relaxed as much as he was able in his cramped quarters and his bonds, slowed his breathing as he had been taught and started to count the seconds.

ooO xXx Ooo

Phil Coulson and Natasha Romanoff needed few words to communicate. They had worked together for so long, each anticipated the other flawlessly.  Setting up a mobile command post and starting the surveillance of the place where they suspected Barton had been taken was a matter of minutes. Refining their infiltration strategy, now that they were on the ground, took just as little time. And even though Coulson had to work harder than usual to keep his professional facade from showing cracks, only Natasha would have known. Or Clint, of course.

But while Barton’s life hung in the balance Phil Coulson could be counted on to do what was needed. So he and Natasha worked seamlessly, passing relevant information to each other while Avent and Walsh briefed them about the operation to shut down a diamond smuggling ring.

“There are maintenance tunnels running under the ground floor of the building.” Cecily Avent fanned out the blueprints for Natasha to study. “The street level was clean. As in spotless. But at the end of this hallway,” she pointed, “we found a locked door with a keypad. We didn’t have time to...”

Natasha quirked a corner of one lip. Coulson knew that she had spent enough hours training _Hawkeye’s chicks_ for Cecily to recognise the look as a smile and not panic. “That’s ok. I’ll find him.”

She was gone moments later, slipping across the square like a shadow. She entered the factory through a second story window while Coulson tracked her progress. Natasha kept up a steady stream of _clear_ while she made her way through the building, not letting on that the lack of guards - or anyone, really - worried her as much as it worried Phil. Coulson heard it anyway. And while each solemnly spoken _clear_ sent an icy stab into his heart, it also comforted him in some obscure way. Until they found his body, Clint Barton was alive.

Natasha was always thorough, and while she searched the building room by empty room, she habitually deployed sensors. Coulson just as habitually added the data streams to the comms as each sensor’s receivers came online. Until Walsh suddenly yelled.

 “Oh my god,” Walsh’s chair rocked back with enough force to bounce off the wall. He stared at the comms screen as if he was seeing things. “Sir!” He shouted. “It’s Barton! His comm is still active!”

 

ooO xXx Ooo

_Barton, can you hear me?_

Whispered words like the steady drop of water from a tap left half open, they trickled through his mind and meshed with the seconds he counted until he lost track of both. His concentration, meticulously maintained for hours, shattered like glass. Now little remained to push back the darkness and fear welled from deep in Clint’s mind. His breathing sped when there wasn’t enough air, his skin grew hot and tight, then cold and clammy and just before the panic took hold of him, the voice came again.

_Barton. Clint. We know you can hear us. Answer if you can._

_Barton.... Talk to me._

Clint returned to full awareness as soon as he recognised the voice. Coulson’s voice. The steady hand on the helm on many of his missions. The man he trusted above all others. The man who trusted in him. He remembered who he was then. Where he was. How he was here. And why. The decision to endure morphed back into the will to fight. He worked to collect enough moisture to wet his lips, fought for enough air to speak.

“Phil.”

The word was a croak, a mere breath, but he was heard.

_Thank god._

The darkness was less of a threat now that he had company. Another soul now shared the silence. A trusted soul.

_Are you alone?_

He was captive and restrained. He was alone in the darkness. And yet, he was not. A long time ago Phil Coulson had made him a promise. Accepting it, believing it, _trusting it_ hadn’t come easy to the man who had been deserted by so many. He had learned, along with Nat. And Phil Coulson had kept his word. He was there when Clint most needed him. And Clint was not alone.

“No guards,” he whispered into the darkness.

_Can you move?_

“No.”

_Where are you?_

He had considered that question after waking, before accepting that escaping from this prison was one challenge too far. Remembering was painful when thoughts blurred into each other. He didn’t want to lose the steady drip of Coulson’s voice in his ear, but even that was starting to blur. Breathing had become ... not difficult, exactly. More of an activity that yielded no results. He sluggishly pushed the thought around, knowing he was missing something important, something vital, something he needed to...

_Barton. Talk to me. Where are you?_

He had responded to Coulson’s professional voice for too many years to ignore it now. He found a little more saliva to moisten his lips, found a way to gasp in a non-existent breath and turn it into sound.

“Cellar. Box.”

He still refused to call it a coffin.

**Author's Note:**

> This got a little away from me and will be continued in the next two shorts like a mini-fic within a fic. The Muse had a little too much fun in places, but I always felt that Coulson deserved a grand entrance somewhere in my stories.


End file.
